What Price Covid?
How much has the Covid-19 pandemic cost the United States? A lot. And if, in fact, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is responsible for the virus, then maybe the PRC should be liable for its costs.
As of this writing, the American death toll from Covid stands at more than 628,000. And according to Florida-based Jack Bernstein, Injury Attorneys, the average settlement for a wrongful death ranges between $500,000 and $1 million. So if we were to apply that cost-range and multiply it by the number of deaths in the U.S., we’d have a dollar total of somewhere between $314 billion and $628 billion. o maybe the communist regime in Beijing owes us that much.
But there’s more. Let’s not forget that the U.S. has suffered more than 35 million cases of the disease—that’s more than 10 percent of the national population. Many of those cases, of course, required hospitalization and even intensive care for days or even weeks. The direct cost of coronavirus healthcare, plus the indirect cost of pain and suffering, reaches into the many billions and even trillions.
Furthermore, even for the non-infected, the economic damage of Covid-19 was enormous. In the second quarter of last year, the gross domestic product of the U.S. fell by a Depression-like 32.4 percent. And while the economy has since recovered, few escaped personal trauma, and many have suffered lasting financial damage.
Indeed, the economic carnage has been worldwide. According to a recent study from the liberal-leaning Brookings Institution, in 2020 alone, the virus clipped seven percent off world GDP, which is to say, a planetary loss of more than $6 trillion. Brookings also notes that in response to the pandemic, the governments of the world injected about $16 trillion in cash into their economies. Given the state of emergency last year, at least some of that infusion might have been necessary, and yet as we are already seeing, all that Keynesian cash will increase inflation.
By every possible measure, Covid-19 was enormously destructive. And what if it turns out that Covid-19 was not the result of some terrible act of God, but rather, the result of laboratory negligence or even the result of some sort of contrived weaponization?
Hundreds of officials and groups across America and across the world have made the dire accusation that China is to blame. Yet for the moment, we can rely just on Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL), a member both the House Armed Services Committee and the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, who declared in a July 20 press release:
The evidence is overwhelming that the Communist Chinese Party NEGLIGENTLY, RECKLESSLY OR INTENTIONALLY RELEASED COVID-19 on the world. Moreover, China engaged in a massive disinformation and propaganda campaign to cover up their misdeeds. Dr. Li-Meng Yan bravely defected from China to America after DISCOVERING the COMMUNIST CHINESE PARTY’S destructive and evil Wuhan bio-weapons program. I urge America and the world to wake up to the threat posed by an unchecked Chinese Communist Party. It’s time to get tough and hold China accountable for its deadly actions. [capitalizations in original]
Yet interestingly, the Biden administration doesn’t seem much interested in pursuing this line of thinking or inquiry. And why not? We might list three possible explanations:
Read the rest from James P. Pinkerton
HERE
If you like what you see, please "Like" us on Facebook either
here or
here. Please follow us on Twitter
here.
No comments:
Post a Comment